this past year, one of the better parts of my driving schedule has been listening to wait wait dont tell me. a very well written (or performed, if it isnt rehearsed) news quiz/slight comedy npr show. part of the allure has been the voice of peter sagal and his presentation and after a few months i had a fairly decent picture of what he might look like in my head. a few minutes ago i randomly happened upon the npr website and having never seen a picture of him, i searched for him. he doesnt look like anything i had pictured =/ not that that changes my desire to listen to the show but it does put me off a tad. i want to say i feel cheated but it is just something silly.
anyone else feel similar when they find out a radio personality/musician doesnt in fact look anything you had imagined? does the disconnect make you listen/like them any less?
i ask in part because i am just curious and in part to see if this theory i have about us mathematicians is correct...we tend to personify problems. there are ones that we like and ones that we hate with a passion just like a person who cuts us off in traffic or yells at us for no reason. there are ones that are annoyingly easy but take us ages to solve which results in expletives being yelled upon finishing the problem but then also a little chuckle. it is fairly quirky and very few people in my own dept understand what i mean when i say that. wonder if the whole people not looking like i had thought them to is just an extension of that phenomenon or something entirely different.